Patty Jenkins

THE DIRECTOR REDEFINING HOW THE WORLD SEES WOMEN

- Belinda Luscombe

THE FIRST MAN WONDER WOMAN EVER sees, at least in the record-setting movie version of her story, is a fighter pilot. He crashes, she saves him, and that sets in motion her departure from the safe allfemale island she grew up on. The first man director Patty Jenkins ever saw was also a fighter pilot: her father William Jenkins. He also crashed, during a combat-training exercise when Patty was 7 years old. He was not saved, and she grew up in her own tribe of Amazons—with her feminist mother and two sisters.

The parallels between the director and the subject of the most lucrative superhero origin story in history don’t end there. Jenkins is also related to a god: in her case, it’s acting deity Richard Burton, her father’s second cousin. She’s not afraid to travel at speed: she excels at both in-line speed skating and downhill skiing. And crucially, both she and Diana Prince, Wonder Woman’s alter ego, see the world as a place where women take for granted that they have the power to fight back. They grew up more or less innocent of the fact that it could be otherwise.

We cannot be what we cannot see, as the saying goes, and in Wonder Woman, Jenkins created a universe in which an ambitious, strong and, yes, aggressive woman could be admired and followed. She could challenge men who had done wrong and win. Other men would even take her side, because she was right.

Jenkins’ timing was fateful. She offered up her portrait of a woman during a real-world year bookended by the defeat of America’s first mainstream female presidential candidate and the beginning of a revolution against sexual harassment.